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When Geraud Blanks was a kid, he didn’t know what he wanted to do when he grew up. Blanks — who is now chief innovation officer at Milwaukee Film — just knew he loved movies.
“When I was growing up, it was me and my mother going to the movies every weekend. It was our thing,” said Blanks. “Whatever the last movie I saw, if it was about karate or firefighters or whatever, that’s what I wanted to do with my life. Every week I changed my dream.”
The power of film to inspire through storytelling stuck with Blanks, and he said it perfectly aligns with the mission of Milwaukee Film, including its work with businesses such as Kohl’s.
In addition to screening films at Oriental Theatre and hosting the annual Milwaukee Film Festival, the organization’s Cultures and Communities initiative focuses on using film to share the stories of historically underrepresented communities, including members of the Black, Latinx and LGBTQ communities.
MORE: Rosa Parks to ‘Reading Rainbow’: 4 things to look for at Milwaukee Film’s Cultures & Communities Festival
Using film to create conversations
When the COVID-19 pandemic closed down movie theaters and canceled events in 2020, staff at Milwaukee Film had to figure out how to continue sharing stories through movies. And the death of George Floyd and resulting civil rights marches made the Cultures and Communities mission to build empathy through sharing other people’s perspectives even more urgent.
“We have a virtual platform, and a lot of our corporate sponsors were focused on their staff and how to engage them during the pandemic,” said Blanks. “Oh, and by the way, there was a global social justice movement going on at the same time. My colleague, Maureen, asked me, ‘Hey, have you thought about showing films to create conversations?'”
That’s how the Engage & Activate program was born. Blanks and Maureen Post — Milwaukee Film’s director of strategic partnerships — spearheaded an effort to bring films into Milwaukee’s businesses, in an effort to facilitate people’s discussions about difficult topics. They’ve found a receptive audience in workplaces that are looking to enhance their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training.
Most companies choose topics around awareness campaigns like Black History Month and Pride Month, then consult with Post to determine how to run the film and discussion sessions. Companies publicize the events through their employee resource groups, and Blanks facilitates most of the sessions.
Jessica Langill, the equity, diversity and inclusion coordinator at Rogers Behavioral Health, said tying the sessions to awareness months has been a good strategy because those are the times when people are naturally interested in learning more information about different groups of people and the issues they deal with.
For example, for Black History Month, they watched and discussed “The Neutral Ground,” a documentary film about the effort to take down Confederate-era monuments in New Orleans. And during Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, employees watched “And Then They Came for Us,” a documentary film about Japanese Internment camps.
A film for every topic
Sometimes a group will tell Blanks the theme they’re interested in and ask for his input into a film. Blanks said he’s usually able to look through “his mental film inventory” to come up with a film that fits the theme. Or if something doesn’t come to mind right away, he says he knocks on the office door of a colleague who helps him out.
But he remembers struggling when Brenda Best, the Milwaukee Brewers senior director of diversity, equity and inclusion, asked for a film about authentic communication for an upcoming Engage & Activate session. He was tasked with finding a film that touched on how people from different backgrounds can talk to each other about things like microaggressions and bias.
Blanks said there’s a film for every topic, but not all of them are good. “Remember in high school the teacher would say, ‘we’re going to watch a film,’ and it would turn out to be the most boring documentary?” said Blanks. “I found a few like that, but I won’t ever give people those films.”
Blanks said he was starting to panic when he stumbled across a short, 15-minute film about two young girls who witness and record a white woman “being disrespectful” to a homeless Black man. When the woman sees she’s being filmed, Blanks said “she has a change of heart” and tries to convince the girls not to post the video to social media.
“It was the perfect film about authentic communication,” said Blanks. “The film shows the girls negotiating over what to do over the course of several blocks as they walk, and it resulted in a great discussion about analyzing everybody’s motives in a situation and the best way to communicate important truths.”
Michelle Banks, chief diversity & inclusion officer with Kohl’s, remembers watching “Speed Sisters,” a film about the first all-woman race car driving team in the Middle East. She also looks forward to an upcoming session of “Straight/Curve,” a film about redefining body image that she thinks will spark discussion among employees.
“We leverage our business resource groups and empower them to pick films that will resonate,” said Banks. “Then doing talkback sessions with those select groups give them a chance to dissect content and have good vulnerable conversations with people.”
‘I see you, let’s talk’
Banks also said Kohl’s employees appreciate being able to share personal stories and have discussions with coworkers they may not have encountered during their jobs.
Because the sessions are virtual and invitations are company-wide, employees get the chance to meet people from different parts of the country and who work in different divisions.
Anne Ballentine, the vice president of marketing and communications with Rogers Behavioral Health, agrees. “We’ve been able to bring people into a single group who are located all across the country,” she said. “The most recent film discussions we had were really engaging conversations with people who wouldn’t normally get the chance to know each other.”
Esteban Malacara, a principal at Case High School in Racine, said staff participated in 8 sessions over 8 months focused on subjects such as ableism, gender identity and different cultures and races. As the Racine Unified School District has become more systematic in its DEI training, Malacara said the Engage & Activate programs have become part of a wide variety of options for teachers and staff, along with things like book clubs and presentations.
“A lot of people have remarked on their raised awareness, that they now understand things they never would have thought about before,” Malacara said. “Then they’ve been able to scale that down to their classrooms, to the kids sitting in front of them on a daily basis and the things they may be struggling with that the teacher hasn’t considered.”
Malacara said teachers are now more empowered to see and understand their students better, to say, “I see you, let’s talk, let’s figure this out together, I respect you and care for you no matter who you are.”
DEI and Critical Race Theory
While DEI training has increased in popularity in recent years, especially following the racial justice protests of 2020, there has also been pushback against the concept. Activists and legislators have equated efforts to increase understanding of diversity and equity to critical race theory, an academic framework that examines the extent to which racism is perpetuated in institutions, policies and laws. Those who push back against critical race theory and DEI efforts say the teachings unfairly characterize white people as inherently racist.
The people who have led Engage & Activate sessions are committed to DEI work, but they also say they take steps to make sure their employees feel comfortable in participating.
“If we force people to do specific trainings, we won’t get the outcome we want so we’re not pushing this on people, and we’re giving people choices,” said Malacara. “That’s why we surveyed everyone in the district about their comfort level in these types of trainings, and, based on that, we’re giving resources that people can read or watch and find out where they can grow. We’re definitely committed to DEI.”
Although a lot of DEI efforts started in the aftermath of the protests against police brutality in 2020, Blanks doesn’t see DEI as a fad, a trend or even primarily race-centered.
Blanks is well-versed in critical race theory because of his upbringing. “I grew up in a home where I learned about this stuff when I was ten years old,” said Blanks. “And if you grew up in Milwaukee, you’ve known what Juneteenth is for a long time, even if the rest of the country just discovered it last year.” However, Blanks considers both the Engage & Activate program and DEI work in general to be about more than antiracism.
Malacara agrees, as he pointed out that the Racine school district is diverse in ways that go beyond race. “A couple years ago, I wouldn’t have given much thought to DEI. I would have thought it was all about race,” said Malacara. “But, especially with watching all these films about different people, I’ve realized there are so many other lanes. There are a lot of different groups of people we need to do better by.”
Reaching people at an emotional level
In fact, equity is often seen as a key goal in schools — to help children get to the same starting point so they can take equal advantage of the learning opportunities available to them and achieve at similar levels.
Blanks, who has children with autism, remembers showing a film to a group of Kohl’s employees called “Black Boy Joy.” He said the plot is about a father raising his autistic son after the child’s mother has died, with the help of his own father, who has “old-school” beliefs about raising children.
Blanks described starting the conversation over Zoom, talking to everybody’s “black squares with names” and then watching people slowly turn their cameras on as the conversation evolved to people sharing their own stories.
“I was talking with a middle-aged white man who has a child with autism just like me and he was telling me about his insecurities and how his wife had to teach him to have patience and understanding,” said Blanks. “I went through the same thing, and that’s when I had to turn off my camera for a minute because I was tearing up.”
“This happens all the time in these conversations. It doesn’t matter if it’s about people of different races or LGBTQIA people or our children,” said Blanks. “I care about DEI, and I’ve been learning about it since my mother taught me about these things when I was young. Now I just want to help move it forward.”
Ballentine thinks those visceral, emotional moments of connection are likely to happen more often with film than other DEI programming, and it’s why Engage & Activate is such an effective way to learn about issues of diversity and equity.
“It’s one thing to hear a speaker or read a book or an article,” said Ballentine. “But when you’re immersed in this kind of artistic or creative expression of an issue or problem, it reaches people at a more emotional level. Then to have a venue where you can talk about it together with other people that experienced it, I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it.”
Contact Amy Schwabe at (262) 875-9488 or amy.schwabe@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @WisFamilyJS, Instagram at @wisfamilyjs or Facebook at WisconsinFamily.
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